Study: Afternoon exercise may be most beneficial for those with diabetes

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - The timing of a person’s workout could make a difference in preventing complications from diabetes.

While it’s true that there’s no bad time of day to exercise, a new study showed for those who have diabetes and want to get the best benefit from their workouts, afternoon workouts may help control blood sugars so much that a person may be able to reduce medication and complications from diabetes.

The study on exercise timing and type 2 diabetes was just released in the journal “Diabetes Care." Researchers found that compared to mornings, afternoon workouts better manage blood sugar levels.

“Our bodies are supposed to move. So, the more we move them, the better we feel. We can’t cure things necessarily with exercise, but we can help you overcome the symptoms,” Karen Sims said.

Sims specializes in medical exercise programs at TriHealth’s Fitness and Health Pavilion. The symptoms of diabetes, which may be better managed by fitness, can be everything from loss of limbs, fatigue, or kidney failure.

2,400 people were in the study. All of them were overweight and living with type 2 diabetes. As part of the study, they were hooked up to an accelerometry recording device. That’s a device that measures vibration or acceleration of motion to gauge physical activity.

Researchers found at the end of the first year, those who did moderate to vigorous physical activity in the afternoon had the greatest reduction in blood sugar levels. By the fourth year, not only did they maintain these drops, they also had the greatest chance of getting off medication.

“The biggest thing and I think we are talking about fatigue, which are some of the symptoms people are seeing. It helps increase our metabolism, so that’s how much energy we use. The more energy we use, the more energy our body makes. It’s kind of like, if you use it, it makes more. If you don’t use it, it just sits there,” Sims said.

The authors of the study said after this trial, there’s still no bad time of day to exercise if someone has diabetes or not. If a person can’t exercise in the afternoons, any time of day will still manage blood sugar levels more than no exercise at all.

What is long covid? For the first time, a new study defines it.

More than 200 lingering symptoms have been reported in patients who suffer ongoing health problems after a covid infection. Now a new study has identified 12 key symptoms that best define the debilitating condition known as long covid.

The findings, published Thursday in JAMA, are based on 9,764 participants in a study called the RECOVER initiative, which stands for researching covid to enhance recovery, a four-year, $1.15 billion study of long covid funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The research is expected to help standardize the definition of long covid and have a significant impact on how the condition is diagnosed and studied, said Leora Horwitz, a physician and co-principal investigator for the RECOVER Clinical Science Core at NYU Langone Health.

“If you look up simple questions like ‘how many people get long covid,’ the answers are all over the place because people define it differently,” Horwitz said. “To really advance the science, we need a common language.”

In addition to identifying the key symptoms of long covid, the study used a point scoring system based on how likely the symptom was a true signal of long covid versus another condition.

For instance, when researchers analyzed patients’ self-reported symptoms, they found that some symptoms were more common in people who had been infected with covid, but were less common in people who never had covid.

These included loss of taste or smell or post-exertional malaise, which is a worsening of symptoms following even minor physical or mental exertion. Other symptoms, such as brain fog or chest palpitations, were found to be common in long-covid patients, but were also common in other conditions, so those symptoms received fewer points.

The 12 symptoms of long covid

To meet the study’s definition of long covid, a participant needed to score a total of 12 points once all their symptoms were added up. The 12 key symptoms and their corresponding scores are:

In general, the higher someone’s score was, the worse their ability to carry out every day activities, said Tanayott Thaweethai, study lead author and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Higher symptom scores also correlated with a lower quality of life, he said.

“This offers a unifying framework for thinking about long covid, and it gives us a quantitative score we can use to understand whether people get better or worse over time,” he said.

Evolving definition of long covid

Researchers cautioned that the findings are preliminary, and that it is too soon to use the symptom list and scoring system to diagnose long covid or determine eligibility for disability benefits.

Horwitz said she expects the definition of long covid will continue to evolve and get refined by researchers, but called this study a “huge first step” toward creating a standard definition. The next step is for researchers to validate the study results and compare them against lab tests and imaging.

Currently, the World Health Organization defines long covid as having any new symptoms three months after an initial covid infection, where the symptoms have lasted for at least two months with no other explanation. While the definition is inclusive and flexible, it doesn’t clearly define long covid for researchers, Horwitz said.

Based on the 12 defining symptoms, the rate of long covid among different groups in the study ranged from 10 to 23 percent, depending on when they were infected and whether they had entered the study already having a diagnosis of long covid.

The high end of the range may be largely due to an over representation of people who had long covid before they enrolled in the study, said Andrea Foulkes, senior study author and principal investigator of the RECOVER Data Resource Core at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Researchers say that they suspect the real world incidence of long covid is closer to about 10 percent of people who contract the illness, based on the rates seen in people who joined the trial within 30 days of contracting covid and who didn’t yet know if they might develop long covid.

This study also found that long covid was more common in people who were unvaccinated and in people who had been infected with covid more than once.

Many more symptoms are possible

Some of the most distinguishing symptoms for long covid were not necessarily the most common, or the most debilitating, researchers said.

“There are many other symptoms that participants are experiencing above and beyond those 12 symptoms,” Foulkes said.

For example, symptoms such as headaches and muscle aches are very common among long-covid patients, but are also not uncommon in people who have never had covid. Thirst and abnormal movements, such as tremors or seizures, are not common, even among people with long covid, she said, but the symptoms were significantly more present in people who have had covid versus people who never had the illness.

While some patients expressed concern that the 12-symptom list could exclude some long-covid patients, Nitza Rochez, 45, who lives in the Bronx, said she is grateful to finally have a definition.

“Personally I think that the list of symptoms is too small, but I understand that you have to start somewhere,” she said. “At least it’s more than what we’ve had in the last two years.”

Rochez is a RECOVER study participant and has been coping with long covid since she was first infected in March 2020. In that time, she has experienced all of the 12 symptoms that researchers identified, but also has other symptoms that aren’t on their list, like stuttering.

“Honestly it’s a horrible experience, and I wouldn’t want someone to go through it as blindly as I have been,” she said. “Having a definition would have alleviated my anxiety so much because it would have a name as opposed to not knowing what’s going on with my own body.”

Marta Cerda, 61, of Chicago, said she is hopeful that having a clear definition for long covid can help reduce skepticism around the condition and make it easier for people to get diagnosed or get disability benefits.

Cerda, a RECOVER study participant, was first infected with covid in November 2020, but when she experienced strange symptoms after her infection, like stomach pain, she didn’t initially realize that it could be connected to her covid infection.

“The closer we get to defining it, the closer we can get to educating physicians so that they can help us,” she said.

A total body disease

In the study, researchers also attempted to cluster patients based on their symptom patterns to see whether long covid had distinct subgroups. Horwitz said that patients tended to have symptoms across multiple areas of their body, indicating that long covid was “likely a total body disease.”

Thaweethai said the study further reinforces the idea that there are overlaps between long covid and other conditions that existed before the pandemic, such as an autonomic nervous system disorder called POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and another condition called myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

In future studies, researchers plan to look at questions around whether long covid should be identified and defined differently in children and adolescents.

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Robots can help people be more 'creative' as long as they do this: study

A new study is suggesting that robots with more "charismatic" voices – as opposed to flat, matter-of-fact ones – can help people be more creative. 

Scientists from Denmark found that students who are given a task by a robot with a voice programmed to be more "engaging" and "inspiring" performed better.

These students were also more creative than students who received instructions from an identical robot with a flat voice, according to the findings from researchers in Denmark as published by Frontiers in Communication, a peer-reviewed, open-access science journal. 

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Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational settings, as SWNS, the British news service, noted.

But the Danish research team wanted to determine if the sounds emitted by a robot actually affected the students' performance.

Denmark-based researchers found that a robot with a "charismatic" voice can help people be more creative, as opposed to an identical robot with a flat voice, according to findings published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.  (SNWS)

While teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas, the researchers said they wanted to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more "successful" as creativity facilitators.

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Said Dr. Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, one of the study's authors, "We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate – i.e., charismatic – tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact tone of voice," as SNWS reported.

"When the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate."

She went on, "We found that when the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate."

Dr. Fischer and colleagues used a text-to-speech function engineered for characteristics associated with charismatic speaking, such as a specific pitch range and a certain way of stressing words. 

This robot was programmed with different voices to test creativity levels among students once they heard the different voices. (SWNS)

Two voices were developed – one charismatic and one less expressive, said SWNS.

The scientists recruited five classes of university students; the students were all taking courses that included an "element of team creativity," as SWNS noted.

A robot speaking on video "led" the workshop. 

Students were told they were testing a creativity workshop, which involved "brainstorming" ideas based on images and then using those ideas to come up with a new chocolate product.

A robot speaking on video "led" the workshop: It introduced the task, reassured the teams of students that there were no bad ideas – and then, afterward, congratulated them for completing the task. 

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It then asked them to fill out a self-evaluation survey, as SWNS noted.

The questionnaire evaluated the robot’s performance, the students’ own views on how their teamwork went – and the success of the session.

Scientists have found that students given a task by a robot with a voice programmed to be "engaging" and "inspiring" performed better. The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.  (SWNS)

Creativity levels of each session were measured by the number of original ideas produced and by how elaborate they were; the researchers measured them as well. 

The group that heard the "charismatic" voice rated the robot more positively, finding it more interactive.

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Their perception of their teamwork was also more positive and they produced more original and elaborate ideas. 

"Our study provides clear evidence for the effect of charismatic speech on listener creativity."

They also rated their teamwork more highly.

But the group that heard the non-charismatic voice perceived themselves as more resilient and efficient, possibly because a less charismatic leader led to better organization by the team members themselves, although they produced fewer ideas.

Study co-author Dr. Oliver Niebuhr, also of the University of Southern Denmark, said, "I had suspected that charismatic speech has very important effects, but our study provides clear evidence for the effect of charismatic speech on listener creativity," as SWNS reported of his remarks.

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"This is the first time that such a link between charismatic voices, artificial speakers and creativity outputs has been found," he also said.

Although the sessions with the robot's charismatic voice were generally more successful, not all the teams responded identically to the different voices. The researchers acknowledged that previous experiences in the students' different classes may have affected their response.

"We would expect that the same stimuli will not yield the same results in all languages and cultures."

The scientists said that bigger studies are needed to understand how external factors affected team performance.

Added Dr. Fischer, "The robot was present only in videos, but one could suspect that more exposure or repeated exposure to the charismatic speaking style would have even stronger effects," as SWNS reported.

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She also said, "We have only varied a few features between the two robot conditions. We don't know how the effect size would change if other or more features were varied."

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"Finally, since charismatic speaking patterns differ between cultures, we would expect that the same stimuli will not yield the same results in all languages and cultures," Dr. Fischer also said, as SWNS reported.

Maureen Mackey is managing editor of lifestyle for Fox News Digital.